Law & Disorder —

Where have all the music pirates gone?

Of the 10,000 most popular files on a popular BitTorrent tracker, only 290 …

Remember when music was cool? Back in the days of Napster, it was music that defined file-sharing; millions of people raced to listen to the most obscure artists found in the libraries of friends and strangers. But that was back when music came on CD, was sold only by the album, and was a chore to rip to computers and (gasp!) transfer to the new MP3 players.

Now, with iTunes ascendant, DRM vanquished, the album disaggregated, and Pandora and Spotify available on smartphones, it's almost more trouble than it's worth to share music online unless you happen to be the world's biggest cheapskate (and/or a college student).

All of which may explain why a new, rightsholder-funded study of P2P file-sharing shows music being traded far less than films, pornography, TV shows, video games, and computer software. Piracy isn't a problem that industries like to have, but at least it suggests high interest in one's product. When it comes to the 10,000 most popular files being shared online, however, music can only manage to beat out e-books in popularity.

I want my MTV Hollywood blockbusters

When a TV/movie company like NBC Universal funds a P2P study from a company that specializes in antipiracy work, the end result is hardly a disinterested piece of data. But Envisional's recent P2P study (PDF) did contain a nugget that caught our attention: the relative popularity of content.

Envisional's researchers looked through the 10,000 most popular files being managed by the PublicBT BitTorrent tracker and broke it down by type. Pornography was, err, on top, with films coming next in popularity. Music sits way down the list.

The percentage obviously depends on just where you place your cutoff. The Pirate Bay's overall top 100, for instance, has 10 recent albums in its list (the rest is almost exclusively video content). Still, the disparity in the numbers are eye-popping; pirates want movies more than music, and by a significant margin.

Was bit-torrent ever used widely for music piracy? I was of the understanding that the protocol took quite a while to get up to full speed, and thus didn't offer any advantage for small files like MP3 albums.

Let me take myself as an example. I live in The Netherlands and up until now it's not possible to use iTunes or a comparable service (both with regards to ease of use and the catalogue of available items) to buy or rent movies or tv series. Therefore, I have resorted to use an American iTunes account for that goal. Many people in my country or the rest of Europe, however, are not able to do so. Instead, they still download their movies and tv series from sites like The Pirate Bay and news groups. Luckily, iTunes (and Spotify etcetera) has quite a large music catalogue, which gives ample possibilities to easily and legally buy music.

With this knowledge in mind, I think the results of the presented research make sense, a lot of sense: easier possibilities to acquire good quality content have arisen. And I believe that is the only possibility to counter piracy.

Let me take myself as an example. I live in The Netherlands and up until now it's not possible to use iTunes or a comparable service (both with regards to ease of use and the catalogue of available items) to buy or rent movies or tv series. Therefore, I have resorted to use an American iTunes account for that goal. Many people in my country or the rest of Europe, however, are not able to do so. Instead, they still download their movies and tv series from sites like The Pirate Bay and news groups. Luckily, iTunes (and Spotify etcetera) has quite a large music catalogue, which gives ample possibilities to easily and legally buy music.

With this knowledge in mind, I think the results of the presented research make sense, a lot of sense: easier possibilities to acquire good quality content have arisen. And I believe that is the only possibility to counter piracy.

Yet the various studios and the RIAA/IFPI etc continue to complain about declining music revenue.

Why bother with torrents when you can find virtually any album on rapidshare/mediafire/megaupload/etc. Its the format of choice for blogs specializing in leaks. Its just torrents that stopped being popular for the media.

Why bother with torrents when you can find virtually any album on rapidshare/mediafire/megaupload/etc. Its the format of choice for blogs specializing in leaks. Its just torrents that stopped being popular for the media.

Funny, but this is the exact opposite of the way I'd use BitTorrent if I were going to do such a dastardly thing. The damn-near-complete death of specialty music retail means that my chance of being able to go to the store and listen to a reasonable sample of an album before I buy it has decreased from poor to nonexistent. File sharing, on the other hand, is legendary for having pretty much anything and everything available for download, thus offering the ethical music lover the opportunity to actually determine whether he or she likes an artist or album in order to make informed an informed purchasing decision (and then of course deleting the downloaded copy).

This hinges on the fact that music is something most people enjoy listening to many times, as opposed to movies and TV shows that are usually only watched once. Watching a full downloaded video file as a sample pretty much obviates the need or desire to make a purchase.

I guess the real takeaway here is that the majority of people who use the torrent tracker in question are not as ethical as I would be, were I to engage in something as nefarious as file sharing. Which honestly makes me a little sad, since it lends at least a little bit of reason and sympathy to the arguments of the content industries.

I'd say more that the content for music has moved elsewhere. Like direct download sites. Or newsgroups (people keep telling me Usenet is great for this stuff, but seriously guys - Usenet?!). Or in some cases now that music is sold from major sources DRM-free, maybe they're just buying.

Though I can tell you that I'm much more careful about buying digital music since the prices shot up than I used to be. $16.99 in iTunes Australia? That's really expensive for something that doesn't even come with a booklet or a jewel case or, you know, a pressed disc.

I don't know if this tells an accurate story. A TV show downloads in under an hour, an album downloads in ten to twenty minutes, an e-book takes a few seconds, a movie takes hours or sometimes a day. So it makes sens to me, that in any given point in time, that most of the files being downloaded are the largest files. It would make more sense to do a study over a year's time.

We can finally get most music in a convenient format at an (almost) reasonable price, legally.

Compare that to the pathetic selection of TV shows available for streaming and the major media conglomerates' constant fight to keep viewers from watching what little is available on a TV-connected device ...not to mention the pointless Blu-ray copy protection arms race.

The data's not very useful, pirates stopped using torrents quite a while back and moved onto faster, more secure services.

Wait, what? The real pirates (scene groups) have never used bittorrent, it's been ftp pretty much forever (well, since BBS slowly died off.) There's been some shift in 'public' piracy to rapidshare etc, and maybe back to newsgroups, but the traffic numbers still show that BT is much bigger than either of those.

Most of the music pirates have probably gone to encrypted files on file-sharing websites like MegaUpload, Hotfile, etc.

That is why Bittorrent music sharing has disappeared pretty much, people know that doing encrypted files on file-sharing websites with obfuscated filenames is pretty much impossible to get caught territory.

Why bother with torrents when you can find virtually any album on rapidshare/mediafire/megaupload/etc. Its the format of choice for blogs specializing in leaks. Its just torrents that stopped being popular for the media.

1. Files on such sites get deleted rather quickly.

2. Such sites are typically much slower than torrents, and such sites often have a limit on sizes you can upload.

(people keep telling me Usenet is great for this stuff, but seriously guys - Usenet?!).

Usenet is the proverbial darknet. Content providers have wanted to shut it down for a loooong time, but they haven't been able to. And retention on major usenet providers is approaching 3 years. It's crazy.

Funny, but this is the exact opposite of the way I'd use BitTorrent if I were going to do such a dastardly thing. The damn-near-complete death of specialty music retail means that my chance of being able to go to the store and listen to a reasonable sample of an album before I buy it has decreased from poor to nonexistent. File sharing, on the other hand, is legendary for having pretty much anything and everything available for download, thus offering the ethical music lover the opportunity to actually determine whether he or she likes an artist or album in order to make informed an informed purchasing decision (and then of course deleting the downloaded copy).

This hinges on the fact that music is something most people enjoy listening to many times, as opposed to movies and TV shows that are usually only watched once. Watching a full downloaded video file as a sample pretty much obviates the need or desire to make a purchase.

I guess the real takeaway here is that the majority of people who use the torrent tracker in question are not as ethical as I would be, were I to engage in something as nefarious as file sharing. Which honestly makes me a little sad, since it lends at least a little bit of reason and sympathy to the arguments of the content industries.

Honestly. Someone needs to invent a music format that deletes itself after one listen and I would buy so much more music. As it is I hear about artists I’ve never heard of and download a bunch of MP3s to see what they’re like. I tell myself if I like it I’ll buy it. But honestly once it’s on my iPod my impetus to spend time searching and inputting credit card info. Suddenly plummets.

I don't know if this tells an accurate story. A TV show downloads in under an hour, an album downloads in ten to twenty minutes, an e-book takes a few seconds, a movie takes hours or sometimes a day. So it makes sens to me, that in any given point in time, that most of the files being downloaded are the largest files.